Long recognized as one of the most innovative mayors in recent times, Stephen Goldsmith has begun a series on innovative mayors which looks to be informative during our own run up to mayoral elections.
STEPHEN GOLDSMITH on
AMERICA’S INNOVATIVE MAYORS
Lessons from Our Best City Leaders
Each year, through the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard's Kennedy School, we review more than a thousand federal, city and state applications demonstrating smart and innovative ways to do the public's business better. At the heart of many of these programs, I see a strong, inventive and persistent leader discovering effective new ways to use and stretch resources. These examples, championed by dedicated public servants, should encourage citizens that government can indeed be effective and agile.
Over the coming months, I will spotlight some of the best and brightest ideas generated by our nation's mayors. We will examine the critical qualities, including leadership, tenacity and creativity, that enabled these leaders to transform government services. When I was mayor of Indianapolis, I searched for successful programs that could be adapted to benefit the city; it is the intention of this series to identify creative solutions that are readily transferable to other jurisdictions.
In a recent Harvard conference for new mayors, for example, Mayor Joseph Curtatone of Somerville, Massachusetts, recounted that one of his most important accomplishments began by learning about the award-winning CitiStat program in Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (now governor of Maryland) championed CitiStat, and gave Curtatone a first-hand view of the program. Curtatone then created SomerStat — a comprehensive system that builds upon CitiStat's best practices to improve city agency accountability and transparency. The core of the program is weekly performance reviews in which concrete, quantifiable goals are measured against real-time data.
Specifically, we will focus on programs in which a state or local leader championed a major new initiative, such as the environmental actions taken by Seattle's mayor, Greg Nickels. Under Mayor Nickels' leadership, the citizens of Seattle agreed to tackle climate protection at the local level. Mayor Nickels articulated a goal that convinced his constituency to take on what is generally perceived as a national or global issue. Seattle's Climate Protection Initiative has reduced government carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent from 1990 levels, and Mayor Nickels has led a nationwide movement by cities to take on the fight against global warming.
The success of an initiative sponsored by a mayor often depends upon persuasively articulating the case for change and getting the commitment of stakeholders. For example, despite research suggesting that preschool has the potential to reduce urban ills, Denver citizens twice voted down ballot initiatives offering early childhood education to urban residents. Mayor John Hickenlooper evaluated why the initiatives had failed and decided to take an alternative approach: the mayor invited the city's business community to take part in designing the program, crafting a strong economic rationale for improving childhood education. This strategy worked, and ultimately garnered Denver voter approval.
